Exposure to ultra-violet light primarily through exposure to the sun's rays produces a number of harmful effects including premature aging, loss of elasticity, wrinkling, drying, and not least, an increased risk of developing skin cancer. Currently a number of sunscreen and suntan products are marketed to protect against these harmful effects. All of these products contain agents known to filter-out some of the sun's harmful rays incorporated into creams, ointments, lotions, solutions or suspensions. Such products are applied just prior to anticipated sun exposure and provide short term protection and are removed by bathing, washing or normal desquamation of skin.
I have discovered that such sunscreens can be effectively incorporated into nonionic and amphoteric liquid detergents so that repeated washing and bathing with such detergents leaves a long-lasting substantive and effective amount of the incorporated sunscreen in the stratum corneum of the skin. Previous attempts, including attempts of my own, to incorporate sunscreens into soaps have failed because ionic soaps would rapidly degrade the incorporated sunscreen. The current invention solves this problem by incorporating these sunscreen agents into nonionic or amphoteric detergent vehicles.